DALLAS -- Less than a week ago, Dorell Wright came off the bench against Chicago for two minutes in the second quarter. Two. And in a meaningless stretch, to boot.

Tuesday, Wright's newfound scoring touch from the outside gave the Sixers a chance at a road win. He made eight 3-pointers, including four in the fourth quarter, but the Sixers couldn't combat Dallas' fourth-quarter surge, losing to the Mavericks, 107-100.

"It's something I want to do, as far as my personal play, but at the end of the day it's all about this team and getting wins," said Wright, whose team has lost four in a row overall and four straight away from home. "We just have to continue to work hard and compete."

The Sixers needed this one badly. Without their point guard and leading scorer Jrue Holiday for a third straight game, and against a fatigued Dallas team that had lost three straight, and with 10 of their next 11 games on the road, Doug Collins' guys had to have this one.

They didn't get it.

"We know we're undermanned, but nobody cares," Collins said.

"We're all NBA players. Everybody's got to step up and do their job. That's all I can say," Wright said.

The Sixers got trigger-happy from long range, setting a season high for attempts from 3-point range on 13-for-35 shooting. That was the result of a 16-4 run in the fourth quarter, during which the Mavericks turned a two-point lead (80-78) into a rout (96-82).

Wright, whose final 3 cut the Sixers' deficit to 102-97 with 28 seconds to go, finished with 25 points on 8-for-18 shooting. Wright's look from beyond the arc with 16.2 seconds remaining rimmed out. Evan Turner totaled 17 points, five rebounds and five assists, and Spencer Hawes added 18 points and seven boards off the bench for the Sixers (12-13).

If Holiday's injury did anything for the Sixers, it gave Wright an opportunity to regain his confidence following a stretch of 17 games in which he failed to make more than three shots.

"The thing I was happy about was in the first half, Dorell shot an air ball and we got the ball right back, swung it to him and he knocked it down," Collins said. "That, to me, was a huge possession, that he continued to look at the basket."

Strapped for options in the middle, the Sixers fell behind early on -- you guessed it -- points in the paint.

After the Sixers struck for the game's first bucket, Dallas went on an 11-0 run to force Collins to call a timeout. The Sixers responded with an 11-4 run, cutting their nine-point deficit (their largest of the opening half) to two, at 15-13.

Part of that stretch revealed two interesting facets of Evan Turner's game: The third-year forward has found his touch from 3-point distance, and he can play with his back to the basket.

Turner hit a pair of first-half 3-pointers, including one in the Sixers' lengthy first-quarter spurt. That gave him 21 for the season, 10 more than he had all of last season. Then, with so few ways to score in the post, Collins seemed to have given Turner the luxury of backing in from the low post. He made quick work of the Mavericks' Shawn Marion on one possession.

Still, Dallas outscored the Sixers in the paint, 16-2, in the first quarter to take a 28-23 into the second.

"We took advantage of the opportunities we had in there and capitalized on it," Marion said.

As if the Sixers' lackadaisical play at the opening of the game didn't chap their coach enough, they were slow to put a body on Marion on a second-quarter inbound pass. The result: an uncontested running slam from Marion, and the Mavericks extended their lead to 47-41. Collins called a timeout, violently waving his arms in doing so.

Out of halftime, Dallas started misfiring. After Rick Carlisle's team hit 54 percent of its shots in the opening half, the Mavericks went scoreless on seven of their first eight possessions of the third quarter, including six in a row, to allow the Sixers to creep back into it.

"The guys gave us a chance," Collins said.

Turner knocked down a 3-pointer from the left corner, turning around to smirk at the fans who had been chiding him. Wright made a pair of free throws, then made a transition 3-pointer to even things up at 71-all.

A minute into the fourth, Dallas launched its 16-4 run to take control of the game, during which O.J. Mayo, on successive possessions, hit a 22-footer and assisted on Chris Kaman's jumper to give Dallas a double-digit cushion.

At the other end, the Sixers looked hopeless, relying on 3-pointers to cut into their deficit. For a little while it worked, with Wright having his revival game.

"I was just trying to do what I can to help the team win," Wright said.